


falling slowly (eyes that know me)

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Blanket Permission, F/F, fallen angel AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2018-12-14 04:24:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11775453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: The girl kneeling in the cemetery looked nearly angelic. That was a dangerous thing to think.When Carmilla finds another of the Fallen alone in a cemetery, she expects anything but the still-powerful girl who insists she shouldn't have fallen at all.





	1. the fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onbrokenfeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onbrokenfeet/gifts), [LMoriarty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMoriarty/gifts).



> Title from Falling Slowly from the musical Once.
> 
> Some allusions to emotional abuse aka Inanna/Lilita.

The girl kneeling in the cemetery looked nearly angelic. 

That was a dangerous thing to think, but Carmilla had never been one to feel hindered by danger. Mother had trained it out of her. Fear wasn’t useful in someone like her. It got in the way of Carmilla completing her tasks, and Carmilla had long known that if she wasn't useful, she wasn't worth anything. 

She had surrendered all rights to feeling afraid when she’d made her choice, a thousand years and an instant ago. Oh, sometimes she felt the prickling crawl of terror in this fragile mortal body, but it was never enough to stop her. 

She had gone too far to be stopped, tomorrow and yesterday.

Instead of listening to the voice in her mind that whispered at Carmilla to _run run run and don’t look back_ , she stepped through the cemetery gates. The shadow of the cold iron followed her, draping a gentle veil over her power. It wouldn't be enough to stop her, if she didn't want stopping, but it was enough to muffle the buzz of anxiety in her veins. 

Everything was silent as Carmilla moved to join the girl. A few plots beside her, an empty gaped, waiting for a departed soul. It wouldn't be filled now, with the sun all but sunk on the horizon. 

Carmilla stood over her, careful not to loom. Their shadows twined on the ground, Carmilla's stretching tall across the girl's shoulders like the wings they'd both had, forever and never ago. The girl didn't react to the movement, so Carmilla gave her a long moment to realize Carmilla was there before she spoke. Startling someone in this situation didn't tend to end well, to put it mildly. 

“Did you hurt when you fell from heaven?” It hadn’t for Carmilla, but she had heard tales of agony. Personally, she would have preferred that to the blurry nothingness of her experience. The sentencing and the punishment were one and the same. Even in the split second of the decades since, Carmilla hadn’t been able to puzzle out the moment things changed.

The girl looked up at her, and Carmilla nearly stumbled back and tripped over a gravestone at the fire in her eyes. “If that’s supposed to be a pickup line, it’s in poor taste.”

“Oh, and so the mighty one knows a pick up line when she hears one!” Carmilla sidled forwards, trying to look like she’d never flinched away. The fire in the girl’s eyes had abated somewhat, but its presence was frightening. Usually when one of the Fallen landed, they had nothing. Not a name, not a self, not an idea of where they were or why they were there. This one _burned_. “Sorry, sorry, that’s a bad joke.”

“You’re a bad joke,” the Fallen muttered, uncharitably. Carmilla’s lips twitched. “What are you doing here?”

“Overseeing you,” Carmilla told her. Moving slowly and obviously, she leaned to check the name on the stone in front of them. LAURA, it said. It had once said more, but everything else had been worn away by time and the elements. “Offering guidance, blah blah blah.”

“Wow,” the girl said. Her hair caught at the last rays of sun and gleamed golden brown, streaks of lightness laid against the darkness of the roots. “You sound like you definitely know what you’re talking about. I’m so reassured.”

Carmilla snorted, and felt comfortable enough to maneuver around the girl and sit on the bench some kind soul had left next to the LAURA plot. “To be fair, most of the Fallen aren’t so articulate at this point.”

The girl flinched like she’d been struck, but didn’t rise from her place on her knees. Instead, she pressed her palms into the soil in front of her, fingers spread between straggling blades of grass. “I’m not-” Her face contorted. “That isn’t me.”

“The stone? Sure.” Carmilla tapped the one on her other side. LAFONTAINE, it read. The letters had been scorched into the stone with a blowtorch, instead of carved. “But most tend to take the names of the thing they land in front of. Figure it’s a message or something.”

“Did you?”

Carmilla shrugged. “I rearranged the letters a little.” Mircalla had been too close to what her name had been, above the clouds and below the earth. Too close to what Mother had called her, when she had bothered with names .”You can do that too, if you like, though I don’t know what exactly you can make of that.” She squinted at the pale stone. “Aural? Aura L? I don’t think you’ll be able to get much that’s intelligible from that.”

“What’s your name, then?” The girl seemed near-entranced with the feel of earth against her fingers. It could have been charming, if Carmilla wasn’t worried the girl would accidentally channel power and fracture the trees and benches and Carmilla. Carmilla was averse to fracturing, for the most part. Too messy.

“Carmilla.”

“Arcmilla?” The girl peered up at Carmilla, her brown eyes still sparking with an impossible flame. “Was that it?”

“No,” Carmilla deadpanned. “I hope nobody named their child Arcmilla, actually. That’s a terrible name.” She glowered at the girl. “Don’t have a kid and name them Arcmilla. Or anything arc, actually. That's just weird.”

The girl’s smile tipped lopsided, and sunk with the rest of the sun. Even in shadows, she didn’t look dark. Light clung to her skin and simple shift, shining enough to illuminate her beautiful features. “I don’t understand why or how I…” Her fingers curled into fists, but before Carmilla could warn her to let go or back away, she did it herself. The grass lay untouched in front of her. Life. Even with something as small and insignificant to humans as grass, it wasn’t good to destroy it. “I don’t think I’ll be having any children.”

“Well, never say never.” Though Carmilla couldn’t recall any specifics, she was sure it had happened. Everyone had bad ideas sometimes. “Do you mind if I call you Laura? It’s easier than ‘hey you’ or ‘that girl who thinks it's a great idea to sit in a graveyard at night’.”

“I’m not sitting, I’m kneeling.” The girl brushed her hands off on her shift. The dirt fell away in tiny crumbling pieces, refusing to stick to the sheer fabric. Carmilla felt dirty in her wrinkled jacket, the crusted leftovers of mud on her boots. The girl sighed, like she was experimenting with it. “Laura is… fine.”

“Laura,” Carmilla said. They both shivered as she said it, though the wind stayed silent and still. “Names have power. Which I’m sure you knew? So don’t… throw it around. There’s this thing called the internet-”

“I know what the internet is, _thanks_ , Carmilla.” Laura looked at her hands for a moment, then braced herself and pushed to her feet. Where her legs had been resting on the ground there was a smattering of new flowers. Forget me nots, if Carmilla wasn’t mistaken. She tried not to frown. “If names are powerful, do I need to worry about you knowing mine?”

“You know mine,” Carmilla pointed out. Laura didn’t seem to notice the flowers twining tiny vines around her toes, popping up tiny purple and blue flowers over her perfect new nails. “Anything I could do to you, you could do back. Or counter.” She didn’t actually know what she was talking about, and the furrow between Laura’s brows told Carmilla that the other girl was aware of that too. “And-listen, I’m not much of a danger anyway.”

“You’re a Fallen!” Laura tried to take a step towards Carmilla, her hands waving, but her knees trembled beneath her and she had to grab the stone to stay upright. “One of the original. I… I know you.”

“Glad I’m so popular,” Carmilla grumbled. With time the way it was — everlasting and nonexistent — it was always a tossup to see if the newbies would recognize her. Or have a grasp on the concept of language, but the two didn’t seem to be mutually exclusive. There had been one spectacular incident where a new Fallen who didn’t know a word of _any_ language had apparently recognized her face. He had promptly tried to make sure she didn’t have one anymore, which Carmilla hadn’t appreciated. “It’s never that simple.”

“Um,” Laura said, and tried another step. Her ankle nearly went out, but Laura just grimaced and bent her knees, building a more stable base. She was a quick one. Impressively quick. Frighteningly quick, really. “It kind of is? I mean, there’s complicated stuff and then there’s like, sin. Or bad stuff. Doing those kinds of things makes you a… a raging bad person!”

Carmilla snorted. “And here I was thinking you had a solid grasp on English. Raging bad person? I can supply some better words for you, if you like." She held up a hand, ticking off options with her fingers. "Some choice vowels, too. It’s all about description. Maybe if you're good, we can get you up to compound phrases before you walk out of here.”

Laura frowned, thunderously. “I know what I meant to say, and I don’t need lessons on how to swear.”

“Egad,” Carmilla said, affecting an air of absolute surprise. “She speaks!”

Laura used her brand new lungs to sigh once more. Then, she tried for an unassisted step. Carmilla saw the attempt coming, and was on her feet in time to catch Laura as she took an inevitable fall. “Easy. Maybe give yourself a little time before you try for complicated things?”

Laura allowed herself to be lowered back onto the ground. “Complicated?” Her voice was bitter. “Like falling?”

Carmilla sat next to Laura with a huff, careful not to land on any of the delicate forget me nots. They hadn’t spread past their original two lines, but they were thick now, dozens of flowers woven together in every square inch. “If I knew which of us we were talking about, that would help this conversation along.”

In the light of the moon and her own iridescence, Laura scowled. She was good at it, for such a newbie. She had the full package: a forehead furrow, downturned mouth, and stiff shoulders. “You.” Her voice didn’t leave room to argue.

“I know it sounds like an excuse, but I was pushed.” Carmilla held up a hand to forestall Laura’s argument. “Hey! I started with a disclaimer! I know what it sounds like.” She took one breath, long in and long out. “It wasn’t one push. It was a dozen — a thousand — over millennia and all at once. Inanna knew what she was doing. She herded us, all her children, all her _things_ , close to the edge.” Carmilla’s throat grew hot and tight. “Once we teetered there, after so long in her grasp, it was easy to make the jump.”

Laura's voice was flat. “So you’re blaming your fall on her.”

“Yes.” Carmilla said. “No.” Carefully, she reached for a flower. Laura watched her, and her eyes widened as she caught sight of the inexplicable growth. “I told you, cutie, it’s complicated. It’s my fault, but I was built to take that fall. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. Inch by inch.” Her voice finally cracked, and Carmilla looked away before she could see if Laura cared. “It was my fault, but I am the fault of Inanna.”

Laura hummed, a soft sound that was neither an agreement nor a disagreement. She was warm against Carmilla’s side, energy spilling from her like it was free, like it meant nothing. Or maybe she just couldn’t help it. Carmilla was reminded again of her first impression of Laura, small against the stones and sky, but still solid and real and powerful. “And me?”

“Fallen fall for a reason.” Carmilla gathered herself enough to look over at Laura, only to find that Laura was watching her with unwavering eyes. They were as warm as the rest of her. “I know you don’t think you should be here but… everything has a reason. Everything is a cause and effect.”

Laura’s eyes flickered away. Slowly, she traced the old letters of her name on the gravestone. Carmilla watched her. Though Laura wasn’t like any fresh Fallen she’d seen before, Carmilla knew better than anyone how vulnerable you were when you’d had everything you’d ever known torn from you. Earth was a world of its own, and that was a world to be wary of as much as it was one that deserved joyful exploration. “I didn’t-” Her voice faltered. “I don’t remember.”

“That happens,” Carmilla said, gentle. She put a hand on Laura’s arm, light enough that Laura could have pulled away if she wanted to. Laura didn’t. “Most of us don’t remember anything at all.”

Laura shook her head. Her hair swung, a hypnotizing mess of dark and light. The glow of her strengthened for a moment, and Carmilla had to blink back sudden tears. “No. I remember everything. Where I was. Where I will- where I was to be. The things done and must be done.” Her muscles tensed under Carmilla’s hand. “I know everything that I did. But there’s a… hole.”

“Something you fell into.”

Some of the direness in Laura’s tone faded, and she shot Carmilla a dirty look. “No, smartass.”

“See, you can swear!”

“Really, Carmilla?”

“It’s surprising, is all. I’m disappointed! I was looking forwards to teaching someone to swear again.” Carmilla grinned, an expression as obvious as it was big. She knew what she was doing. It wasn’t good for anyone, even a human, to get bogged down in their negative emotions. For a Fallen, it was even worse. “You know what they say. You learn by doing.”

“I thought it was more along the lines of ‘those who can’t do, teach’.” Laura said, and for a moment a smile ghosted over her face. She pulled away from Carmilla, but instead of trying to stand up again, she shifted so that they were sitting face to face, their knees pressed together. “I really don’t remember it, I swear. But I don’t feel like it’s… my fault.” She winced. “It sounds like an excuse.”

Carmilla shrugged. “I’m familiar with the feeling.”

Laura rolled her eyes, then reached out and held Carmilla’s hands in hers. Carmilla’s skin buzzed with energy, something she hadn’t felt since the moment that never was and the moment that came next. “The hole isn’t so much something that collapsed as it is something that feels severed. Taken.”

Carmilla looked into Laura’s eyes, to the inconceivable power in them, the heat, and the layers of restraint that lingered over all of it. She’d known when she’d felt the summons that this Fallen wouldn’t be like the rest. She should have listened to that warning, back before she crossed the gates.

But Carmilla had made her decision. She was going to make up for the things she had done, under control and running wild and every step between. She may have been one of the Fallen, but that didn’t mean she wanted to fall any farther. “Then, Laura, I suggest we take it back.”

In the moonlight, the forget-me-nots shone with an eerie, knowing light.


	2. the rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura was always surprised that people noticed her, but Carmilla knew why. It was the glow. Even under flickering, fading fluorescents, Laura was lit with soft and even light, the sweetness evident in the cast of her mouth and the way she gestured openly enough to include the entire room in her excitement. 
> 
> Carmilla saw all this and more when she looked at Laura. Even after two years, she was a mystery with an endless and fresh past. Carmilla knew she saw more than she used to, with eyes that had beholden Laura fresh-fallen, hands planted in the disturbed earth. She was dangerous. Rip-the-world-at-its-seams dangerous. Being close to her made the remnants of power in Carmilla flame high in warning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's me again!
> 
> I didn't intend to write more, but then I got an idea. And then another. And then another! It might take me a while to write the whole thing because school, but I will get it done. I hope you enjoy part two!

Laura was always surprised that people noticed her, but Carmilla knew why. It was the glow. Even under flickering, fading fluorescents, Laura was lit with soft and even light, the sweetness evident in the cast of her mouth and the way she gestured openly enough to include the entire room in her excitement. 

Carmilla saw all this and more when she looked at Laura. Even after two years, she was a mystery with an endless and fresh past. Carmilla knew she saw more than she used to, with eyes that had beholden Laura fresh-fallen, hands planted in the disturbed earth. She was dangerous. Rip-the-world-at-its-seams dangerous. Being close to her made the remnants of power in Carmilla flame high in warning.  

“And then she was like ‘what do you mean you’ve never had one of these?" Silver flashed across the laminated top of the cheap table as Laura’s hand swung close, reflected light from nothing. “And it was the actual best thing I’ve ever had!” She dropped her hands to rest her head on them, beseeching eyes on Carmilla. “Why didn’t you tell me about them? I shouldn’t have had to learn about Chips Ahoy from someone who tried to murder me when we met!"

It had been a close call, meeting Mel. Laura gave off odd vibes to _everyone_ , not just Carmilla. They had learned that the hard way when Mel had whipped her bow up the second Laura wandered into their meeting, ice cream in hand. 

“Creampuff,” Carmilla said, and grabbed one of Laura’s flailing hands before she accidentally backhanded a waitress into the wall. Laura’s strength, like everything about her, was out of proportion with what she appeared to be. “I was planning on killing you when we met too.”

“You weren’t brandishing a weapon at me,” Laura said, and winked, or tried to. She didn’t quite have the hang of that, and Carmilla couldn’t muster up the willpower to tell her that when she was so pleased she could “wink, just like everyone else on this planet, Carm!"

“I _am_  the weapon.”

“You are the night,” Laura agreed, and her voice slipped an uncanny range into something gravelled and melodramatic. “You are vengeance. You are Batman."

Carmilla snorted. In the background, one of the other clients dropped a plate, and Laura jumped at the shatter. She turned Laura’s hand over, clasping it tight in her own, and the other girl relaxed a fraction. “ _You_ are quoting that wrong.”

“The whole point about being on Earth is being allowed to mess up.” Laura fluttered her eyes at Carmilla, which she did perfectly. In her chest, Carmilla’s heart started and stopped beating. Light from the neon sign of the gas station across the street twined into Laura’s hair, shining as lovely as moonlight. “Isn’t it, Carm?”

“I always thought it was to tutor newbies on cookies,” Carmilla deadpanned. A car backfired, and she folded a second hand around Laura’s, keeping her eyes locked with Laura’s shining brown ones. The best way to override unwanted stimuli was to replace it with something reliable and predictable and familiar. Carmilla was intimately familiar with how to do that, how to smooth out the kinks in the off-kilter sensory systems gifted to all of the Fallen. “Or so _someone_  tells me.”

“Listen-“ Laura said, indignant, her hand hot between Carmilla’s own, but she never got a chance to finish her sentence. In union, four more plates crashed to the floor, and a chunk of plaster rattled from the ceiling. Her nails bit into Carmilla’s palm, but Carmilla barely felt it. With her focus off Laura and her distracting buzz, Carmilla could feel sparks crackling down her spine, an oppressive haze filtering through the air. Her lungs stung, the smell of exhaust pouring in the door. 

The man there could have been anyone, had their world existed in the movies Laura loved so much. Whatever flaws may have existed in his stature or complexion had been smoothed over and brightened and dimmed. The tiles beneath Carmilla’s feet rumbled, mortar crumbling into sand. Her stomach dropped through the separating floor, her heart beating in double time. 

Laura made a noise, half a yelp and half a scream. Her hands jerked away from Carmilla, clapping her palms over her eyes. The moonlight of her skin faltered and then cracked, sheeting out across the table. Carmilla reeled back, the sickly sweet taste of angel magic on her tongue. But the energy skipped around the table, lashing the broken sides of Laura’s plate together, healing the mortar beneath her feet.  

" _Angel_ ,” the Fallen said, disgust slicking his hair back. He loomed over them, half-trapped at the table, the floor shifting seismic beneath their feet, the humans screaming in the background. Neon cast its favour on him, rendering him red and robust. “You follow me, sadistic things, always beyond and behind.”  

“Excuse me,” Laura said, indignant. Lightning cracked between her fingers, splayed across the somehow steady tabletop. “I’m not an angel anymore, I’ll have you know! A hundred percent genuine Fallen!"

Only Laura would have been so offended for being mistaken for a being of ultimate power and supposed goodness. Even so, Carmilla saw the ever-familiar overload pain in Laura’s eyes, the way her shoulders sat high against her ears. Laura dealt worse with Earth than any other Fallen Carmilla had ever met. 

“Lie.” The man cast a glare at Carmilla, but whatever he saw in her, he disregarded. Carmilla was caught between them, the two forces of nature. For never and forever, Carmilla had been the most dangerous thing in any given circumstance, and it was unnerving to be so clearly shown the lie in that assumption. “Angels are always lying, lying, lying.”

“I’m not an angel.” 

The tension between them ached, whatever powered the things Laura could do beating at the man and the corruption that made him lashing at her. 

“Have you fought the corruption?” Carmilla eased out from the bench, the man’s focus on Laura letting her creep away. She circled behind him, careful to let Laura keep her in view at all times. The line of the man’s spine stood stark through papery skin, his neck drawn high and the bleached hair curling down over the jagged edges of bone. “Have you tried to-“

“I am what I am and you _know_  I am.” The floor wrenched under Carmilla’s feet and she stumbled, clattering loud into a still-standing stool at the counter. The denizens of the diner were starting to flee, the bell shrilling at the door. “Angel. Come to burn us again?"

“I am _not_ -"

He dove for Laura, his hands closing around her throat, tiny in his hands—  

And the room was devoured in light, white and unyielding. Darkness ate at Carmilla, her skin raw and aching, her heart a hum in her chest. This Fallen was more powerful than even Will, the power he was drunk on sleeting from him like oil. He stumbled back, screeching, a predator torn from the sky. His back hit the diner counter and it shattered like a gunshot, sending wooden shrapnel every which way. He growled, but Laura was _Laura_ , a shining, growing person-shaped wonder. 

“Back. Down.” Laura advanced on the man, silver wreathing her, pouring from her, consuming her. The ground split under her footsteps, shoots of green finding their way to a new old sun. Carmilla thought again of Laura’s hand on the earth when they’d met and all she had feared. It was all here and now, the living things that this restaurant had been built over mushrooming back into place. Ghost leaves flickered on the table, and the frightened noise of the humans cut out like static, a chorus of birds taking their place. Forget me nots ran wild like grass, tying the tiles together into a floor of impossibility. “You will _back down_.”

The man snarled, his teeth broken shadows against his blood-red mouth. “Make me.” 

Laura tipped her head to the side, her hair still in the storm. The light was falling fast, but the darkness wasn’t growing, the fluorescents taking back over. She looked as young as she wasn’t, her eyes big and brown and soft and deadly. “Why would I need to?"

Carmilla reached across the mess of the broken counter and broke his neck. 

Everything supernatural about their situation extinguished, Laura a girl once more, blinking uncomfortably in the artificial light. A glow still lingered on her, but less than it had been before. There was something in her eyes as she looked at Carmilla that Carmilla didn’t recognize — and she didn’t know if she would want to find out what it was. Carmilla knew what she was. Silver-dark blood bit under her nails, a stinging reminder. 

This Fallen, whoever he may have been, wasn’t the first person Carmilla had killed, or even the first Fallen. That was her self-appointed job. To clear the world of all 

“Carmilla?” Laura sounded hesitant, her hand on Carmilla’s arm barely a touch. “Are you-“

“Fine.” Carmilla shrugged her away, bending to haul the dead Fallen over her shoulder. His arms thudded against her back like he was beating at her to let him down. Motes of dust and ash hung in the air, time twisting in stagnant threads. They wouldn’t have long to get out. The damage killing a Fallen did to the world was spectacular, but after the immediate wound, things healed rapidly. Where they were, at least. Carmilla wasn’t in the mood to consider the real consequences of her actions at the moment. “Let's go.”

That took a moment for Laura to process. Finally, she nodded, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, and headed for the door. The silence scared Carmilla more than her babbling ever would. It had been two years of more-often-than-not nonstop talking. The lack of it didn’t mean anything good. 

Carmilla took one last glance at the demolished diner, reluctantly impressed. The damage was filling itself in, a film reel on reverse. The plants all worked at it, the forget-me-nots on the floor sinking away. 

All but one. A tiny clump of them lingered, rootless, as the centrepiece to the table Laura and Carmilla had been sitting at. They were placid on Laura’s plate, but as everything about Laura, they were impossible and inevitable. Flowers in the dark. Flowers in the night. 

Carmilla followed Laura out the door, the dead man hanging stiff against her heart. 

 

 

* * *

 

  

“Do you think I’m an angel?” Laura’s voice was very small against the night, her chin tucked against Carmilla’s shoulder like she’d be able to hide her words from herself. Her hands, lying against Carmilla’s back, fiddled with the split ends of Carmilla’s hair. Lying on Laura’s arm wasn’t the most comfortable Carmilla had ever been, but Laura needed the comfort. “You always joke about that. When you saw me-“

“I saw something different.” Carmilla shifted, moving Laura gently to the left so she could see her face. In the privacy of their motel room, Laura had stopped glowing. Carmilla didn’t know if she was doing it on purpose, or if she was too exhausted and off-kilter to put off that kind of energy. “I didn’t know what to expect. You aren’t ordinary, creampuff.”

Laura sighed. She nestled closer, her breaths soft and warm against Carmilla’s shoulder. It was Carmilla’s own fault that Laura slept best like this, Carmilla blanketed over her. All of the Fallen had issues processing the sensory input that this new world gave them. Carmilla, well used to this, had offered advice about sleeping that had backfired spectacularly. In lieu of the specialized weighted blanket Carmilla had stored away and lost on their trek, they slept on the bare rock of a lakeshore, Laura tucked beneath Carmilla in a last effort to get her to sleep. It had worked — too well. These days, Laura was mostly fine on her own, but if Carmilla was being honest, the presence of Laura’s kind magic was a lulling effect of its own. 

Carmilla was halfway to sleep when Laura spoke again, her lips brushing Carmilla’s throat and sending a shock through her. “I think I might have wanted that. To be ordinary.” Carmilla hummed, a note that was neither confirming nor argumentative. Laura sighed again, irritation colouring her tension-filled arms. “Carm.”

“Laura.” Carmilla turned her head, reluctant, moving Laura’s lips from her skin. “It’s late.”

“It’s early.” The correction didn’t have much life to it. Laura tugged at Carmilla’s hair once more, sharply, and dropped it, her fingers settling at the small of Carmilla’s back. It was a sweet pain. “Carm. Do I scare you?”

Delirious from the kill and being caught in the eye of conflicting powers, Carmilla forgot herself. She placed a kiss at the pulse on Laura’s throat, the barest brush of what she wished she could do. “Always and never,” Carmilla whispered to Laura’s skin, the taste of that angelic sweetness coating her senses entirely. “I’m afraid of myself more." 

“Carmilla-“

“Sleep,” Carmilla beseeched. “I am so tired.”

And impossibly, Laura did. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Laura, what are you doing?”

Laura didn’t look up, hunched over her phone, her thumb moving quickly. “There’s been an earthquake in San Francisco. They’re saying there might even be a-“

“Tsunami, and they’re evacuating.” Carmilla’s phone whined another alert at her from the side table. She ignored it. “Laura, turn that off. It’s not going to make it any better."

Laura’s thumb stopped, but she didn’t look up. Her gaze seemed to run right through the phone to the floor, like she was searching for fault lines in the ground beneath them. “That’s the choice, isn’t it?” 

Angels were power, plain and simple. Carmilla wasn’t up to date on whatever the humans thought of them at present, but the truth was a lot less complicated than anyone wanted to make it. Energy had been left over when the universe was created, and so it was stored away where it could cause no harm. Except whoever had carefully placed that stray power aside hadn’t considered that angels would have free will, fraught as that was. And so they Fell and wrecked the fledgling planet with their corruption.

Luminous beings they may have been, but the power that they contained — that they _were_  — was never meant to be released. It tore the seams of the world a little wider every time, adding damage to an already human-ruined planet. 

“It’s the choice.” It wasn’t a choice, and they both knew it. If Carmilla didn’t stop the rogue Fallen, they would only get worse, the broken energy lashing out to wreck the world around them. “Are you done on there?”

Laura still wasn’t moving, so Carmilla reached to take the phone from her. A small form lay huddled behind the screen, a child cast asunder on a coastline. She couldn’t have been older than Laura was and wasn’t. 

If the sides of Laura’s phone left Carmilla’s hand with slight dents, Laura never seemed to notice. “Are you ready for today then, creampuff?”

Life leeched back into Laura, her chest moving, then her hands, trembling ever so slightly. She leaned back on the bed next to Carmilla, her body curled around Carmilla’s but never quite touching. “I’ve forgotten.” Her jaw cracked with a yawn. “Was there anything specific?”

“Your new favourite cookie supplier.” 

“I’d call her more of a cookie educator than a supplier,” Laura told her. “Has she heard-“

“Yes.”

Laura groaned. “I’m not looking forwards to that conversation.” A moment passed, the both of them studiously ignoring Laura’s phone, still ringing with disaster alerts. “Just her or…”

“And the bro-sicle. He’s been texting me for the past week about how much he’s enjoying the arctic.” Carmilla shuddered, only half for dramatic effect. She’d spent long enough in the cold awful white before she came to Earth. She couldn’t understand enjoying that kind of constant suffering. “He’s getting some ice samples for the institute of something something, since he’s the cheapest option they’ve got. Everyone else dies too fast up there.” Kirsch, the same impossible half-angel as Mel, could survive near everything the world could throw at him. “Apparently ice from the last ice age tastes ‘wild, man’."

So far, Kirsch had been the only supernaturally-linked person Laura had met that hadn’t tried to kill her. Nearly a year later, Laura had asked if he’d noticed anything odd about her, and he’d said an offhanded, “Duh, you got crazy angel vibes going for you, but I could tell we were going to be bros.”

One of these days, Carmilla was going to know what happened in that brain of his, but she didn’t feel like it would be any time soon. 

Laura snorted, closer to a full laugh than Carmilla would have expected after the San Francisco news. “I’d ask him to bring some back for me, but I get the feeling he’d actually do that.”

“Best not to try it.” There was enough damage to the ice caps without adding a happy-go-lucky Nephilim to the mix. “Since we had to move out from our original location, they’ll take a few more hours to get here than expected.” Carmilla ghosted a hand across Laura’s shoulder. In this time, this place between awake and asleep, curious dawn light seeping through the cheap motel shades, touching Laura the way she always did while they slept seemed blasphemous. “If you wanted to get some more sleep, the bed is yours.”

“Ours,” Laura said, and pulled Carmilla down. 

Angel or not, Laura was impossible to resist. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks again to LMoriarty for being amazing at making my writing make sense. 
> 
> Find me over at writerproblem193.tumblr.com if you have any questions about this fic!


	3. the flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They face Inanna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to LMoriarty, my beta. You caught so many little things and made this so much better. I love you. 
> 
> Warning: temporary major character death. It ends happily, don't worry.

Mel had just texted them an ETA of ten minutes when it happened.

It wasn’t electricity, but it was electrocution. Everything that knew magic in Carmilla lit up and fizzled out. She felt sick, all of a sudden. The floor pitched beneath her, her vision sharpening and fading. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

Another was coming.

“Carm?” Laura’s hands were on her face, tight enough to be painful. She knelt before Carmilla in a kind of supplication, holding her upright, slipping half off the bed. Carmilla’s toes ached, a boot jammed half on her foot. Laura’s face was close enough that Carmilla couldn’t divine anything specific about it, instead setting Carmilla awash in beauty and sleep-creased features. “Carm!”

Carmilla blinked her dry eyes and clung to Laura. Pulse thrummed against her palms, Laura’s wrists impossibly fragile from what Carmilla knew of their strength. “I’m alright.” It was a lie, with Laura this close. Carmilla was aflame with the things she could never have. “Listen, cutie, you can let go now.”

Laura didn’t drop her hands, but they gentled until she was merely cupping Carmilla’s cheeks instead of bracing her. “What was that?”

“Nothing. Everything.” The room focused more, the old clock clicking over to the minute when Mel was supposed to arrive. That was odd. Carmilla could have sworn she barely blinked, but- But. Such was life. “Another comes.”

Laura drew back. “Another? But…”

Laura had been privy to Carmilla’s sixth sense for new Fallen once before, a little more than a year into their life together. Carmilla had sat bolt upright, and started mumbling through locations. Compared to this, though… Even the experience that had accompanied the sudden knowledge that Laura was about to land hadn’t been this extreme.

Whatever- _whoever_ was coming was big. Time was an ironclad and imaginary thing, scattering the Fallen across its length like snow. Some days, the Fallen landed in flurries, a half dozen in a week. Sometimes it was decades between them. Sometimes they were from the first Fall, the ones who had come with Carmilla. Sometimes they were from another time with tight lips and loose morals.

Carmilla hadn’t known many of the others, when she was above. Matska, of course, and Will. And Ell. More of them had known _her_ — according to Laura, she was the closest thing the skies had to famous.

Inanna had never landed. That, or she had come in the time before and after Carmilla and crawled into the heart of the earth where nobody could find her.

Carmilla hoped she burned.

“Here,” Carmilla found herself saying. “Close.”

Laura flailed for her phone and Carmilla let her, the dead child forgotten in favour of googling where exactly ‘here’ was. “It’s called- wait.” Her fingers flew. “This is where I’m- she’s buried. Laura.”

Carmilla blinked. Had they looped around that far? She drove without direction these days, losing herself and Laura in the mundanity of this world, in the ways that the days blended and heaved and hoped for something more. The mundanity and the astonishment of it had made her forget the distance they had travelled.

That just might be a good thing. Now that Carmilla knew where they were, the pull to the new Fallen was pinging like crazy. It was familiar — drawing her mind to one place, over and over again.

Sometimes, the universe did apologize for its misdeeds.

 

* * *

 

Mel still kept half a wary eye on Laura, no matter how many times they met up. She used to do that to Carmilla too, but ever since Laura, Mel’s instincts had the magnetic edge of a compass — straight to the largest danger. Sometimes Carmilla felt a little offended. “So, Hollis, what have you got for us?”

Laura spread the map out on the table, the folds erasing themselves under her hands. “Carmilla knows where we need to head for the next landing.” Laura very purposefully didn’t look at Carmilla, but Kirsch did it for her, eyes wide and guileless. “It’s not one of the usual ones.”

“Worse than Laura,” Carmilla told them. Kirsch went from startled to boggled, his loose shoulders tightening. Carmilla was reminded again of the deadly skill he’d gained, these past decades. “And… different. Nothing like I’ve felt before.”

Mel studied the map, the circled cemetery. “You’re going to want to recruit those old friends of yours again.” It wasn’t a question. “Do you know if they’re around this time of the year?”

Laura made an inquisitive noise. “Friends?”

Carmilla waved her off. “They’re always there when there’s something about to go down. It’s theirs, after all.”

Kirsch dragged his bag up onto his lap, digging through the pockets and sending old receipts scattering everywhere. “Here.” The amulet glittered in low light, casting impossible reflections on the walls. “You might want a little shielding if you’re going in hot after last time, tiny hottie."

Carmilla scowled. “She’s not going to need that.”

Kirsch’s hand didn’t waver. “I know you’re good buddies with them, scary hottie, but they’re still strong enough to send any one of us packing.” He tipped the amulet into Laura’s palm and the reflections vanished as Laura closed her fingers around it. “Better safe than sorry, bro."

“If you’re trying to be annoyingly cryptic, you’re managing it.” Laura crossed her arms. Light washed the room in tune with her irritation, a pop of energy that set the hairs on the back of Carmilla’s neck standing on end. For a moment, the receipts on the floor looked like knives, sharp and short. Kirsch bent and collected them carefully, fingers far from the edges and Carmilla felt uneasy. How long had Kirsch been growing that skill? Even she wouldn’t have been able to manage transformations or disguises like that.

Laura sighed, like she hadn’t noticed that she’d blown the cover off Kirsch’s little armoury. “Mel?” She nodded her head in the half-angel’s direction. “Even you?” Somehow, she sounded betrayed.

Mel took another look at the map, finally seeming to notice the crisp flatness of it. She took a breath, long and even. “They’ll help you contain… whatever it is.

“I hate all of you,” Laura told them, petulant. Carmilla grinned at her, inspiring an even larger pout. “Someday, I’ll pay you back for this. I’ll know everything and tell you all _nothing_.”

“You do that,” Mel said, unaffected, and crumpled the map into a ball. Kirsch slam dunked it into the garbage can, and just like that, Laura melted into warmth again.

Laura stayed gentle as they ate and gossiped and listened to tales of the Arctic, but Carmilla couldn’t relax. _Another comes_ , her mind whispered, and though Carmilla had promised herself that Laura would always rely on her and not the other way around… Carmilla took her hand halfway through dinner and refused to let go.

 

* * *

 

 

Laura was still grumbling about being left out of the loop by the time the car pulled up at the gates of the graveyard, which Carmilla ignored. Carmilla thought it was a fair bet to keep the details from her. When Laura got worked up she got… interesting.

Laf had complained about the plague of forget-me-nots for _weeks_ after Laura had landed. Apparently, it had taken a good deal of flame to get rid of the spread of flowers, and they still adamantly grew in front of Laura’s grave. Carmilla could see them, bright colour in the distance beyond the gates of the graveyard.

Laura hopped out of the car before Carmilla had put it in park, seat belt catching in the door. She darted a fair distance away and knelt on the grass, hands planted in the earth. It was an imperfect mirror of their first moments together — but now Carmilla wasn’t afraid of Laura, she was afraid _for_ her. The amulet glittered around Laura's neck, silver and earth and glass.

_Oh, Laura._

Carmilla walked around the car, tossed Laura’s seatbelt back inside, but she didn’t bother to lock it. If anyone was dumb enough to find themselves at an ancient cemetery in the middle of nowhere at this hour, they deserved a shitty truck for their foolishness.

Carmilla strolled past Laura to the gate, leaving her friend to shake off the disorienting effects of sitting in the rattling old truck for an hour. This time, Carmilla didn’t pass through, instead opting to lean against the wrought iron gate and wait.

Laf was quick. In the blink of an eye, there they were, standing opposite Carmilla with their arms crossed over the terrible vest they’d died in. “This is _my_ place, Karnstein.” They sounded grumpier than they were, but Carmilla could tell they were still somewhat irritated. “This isn’t some kind of landing pad.”

“Hey, I didn’t pick the place. Blame the new Fallen.” Carmilla slid her hands into her pockets, the leather frozen in the early morning air. “Another comes.” The words tasted near foul on her tongue and Laf took note of that. Carmilla sighed. “I brought you an apology gift.”

Laf raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Is this apologizing for the forget-me-nots? Because they started growing again this morning. I don’t know what you’re—“

That was when they caught sight of Laura, standing from her meditation and visible from behind the car. Laf smudged, startled, the lines of them smearing in the air. “You brought _her_?”

Carmilla dangled the gift at them — a lighter, but the kind that still threw sparks long after it ran out of fuel. Perry would likely confiscate it before long, but Laf would enjoy it while it lasted. “She’s- look, I know you got vibes from her-“

“Extreme, angel murder vibes,” Laf agreed.

“-but she’s my friend.” Carmilla watched Laura stand and brush herself off, the amulet glittering around her neck. “I’ve spent the last two years with her. Because she’s…” Carmilla ran out of words. Beautiful. Impossible and implausible and _there_. “I’m trying to figure out why she Fell.”

Laf watched Carmilla, the lighter hovering just above their palm. Their eyes were sharp, more than Carmilla would have liked. “Friend,” they said, eventually. “Got it. Ill-fated crushes are a real passion of yours, aren’t they?”

Before Carmilla could muster up a response, Laura bounded over, the thighs of her jeans smudged with muddy handprints. The earth was the only thing that seemed to leave a mark on Laura. “Carm, I think I felt something-“

Laura stopped, hands on her hips. She stared at where Laf was, the ghost grinning at Carmilla with undisguised glee. “You got it bad,” they said, and then flickered again. Laura hopped back, the necklace bouncing. “Hey there, Hollis. That’s the name you picked, right?”

Laura nodded cautiously, sidling close to Carmilla. She didn’t cross the iron gateway. Smart little angel. “Hi?” She elbowed Carmilla, harder than Carmilla thought the situation warranted. “You must be Carmilla’s friend.”

Laf’s grin was wicked. “I’d say the same for you.” They offered a hand, the lighter vanished into the nevernever of their body. “Lafontaine. This is my cemetery.”

Laura smiled at them with hilariously feigned confidence. “Laura. Laura Hollis.” She peered over their shoulder. “I’m sorry about the forget me nots.”

“Eh. It’s an excuse for flamethrowers.” Laf gave Laura a further once over, like they expected a glowing danger sign to write itself across Laura’s face. “You know what? Come on in.”

“Thanks?” Laura stepped past them, steps careful like she was afraid she’d leave flowers in her footprints.

Carmilla followed her, suffering Laf’s knowing look when Laura grabbed her hand for comfort. “Thanks, Laf. I’m sorry this stuff is dragging you back into this mess.” She wasn’t sure if she meant her life or the whole Fallen business. “I’m sure you’d prefer to be posthumously improving modern science in peace."

“Better here than elsewhere.” They sighed, their entire being flickering with their exasperation. “Like San Fran, for example.”

Laura, a few steps ahead, had finally tired of Carmilla’s slow pace and tugged free, bounding towards her almost-gravesite. She missed Laf’s words, and their old, knowing eyes. Carmilla didn’t. She still remembered the look in Laf’s eyes when she’d explained the dead Fallen whose magic had blown the top off Vesuvius. It had been Carmilla’s fault, all those deaths. It had taken a while for their friendship to come back from learning that. “It couldn’t have been avoided.”

Laf scowled. “That’s not what I’m getting at, Karnstein. Nothing tends to happen around the Fallen without your say so. And that means things don’t happen without reason.” Laf’s tone made it difficult to tell if that was a compliment or not. “Was it you? Her?”

Carmilla watched Laura lay a delicate hand on top of her never-gravestone, the stone shedding grit and mending cracks under her fingers. She remembered the look in Laura’s eyes when the air itself burned, the Fallen stumbling from her wrath. “Me.”

“If that’s the whole story, I’ll start rolling in my grave.” Laf elbowed Carmilla, something she felt only in a there-and-gone prickling of electricity. “There’s something off about her. And you. Spill."

“Where’s your better half?” Carmilla jerked a thumb at the lush patch of earth by the entrance of the graveyard, the only physical sign that remained of the first-interred. “I’d have thought she-“

“Was waiting to see what everything looked like without interference?” Perry shook herself from the air, brushing mist from her skin the same detached way she cleared dust from the caretaker’s shack. “No offence to you of course Carmilla but your Laura is… a bit of a wild card.”

“She isn’t _my_ -“

“This must be the other friend you were talking about?” Laura had managed to wander back over while Carmilla was preoccupied, her best smile on, her hand extended. “Hi! I’m Laura Hollis. You’ve probably heard of me?"

Perry gave Laura a non-smile, her lips pressed tight. “Perry. I’m- oh!”

Perry stared down at her hand, solidly wrapped in Laura’s smaller one. Laura blinked at her, hair frizzing at the edges. “Are you-?”

Laf smacked Laura’s shoulder. She jumped back, stumbling right into Carmilla. They went down in a heap. Dignified, Carmilla reminded herself. She was a dignified Fallen with earthshattering powers.

“Ow,” Laura said, almost surprised, and Carmilla kept their hands linked after she’d helped Laura upright. “What was that for?”

Laf grinned like a fiend. “Oh, I changed my mind. I like you. I like you a lot.”

“Lafontaine.” Perry twisted her hands together. It seemed like she was trying to scrub the taint of corporeality off her skin. “Go easy on her.”

Gravity flickered, Carmilla swaying on her feet. Laura was at her side in an instant, bracing her upright. “Carm?”

“I think it’s now.” Would be, should be, couldn’t be now. Carmilla swayed, the earth bucking underneath her feet. This time, she went down, Laura with her. The feeling of another warm body on top of hers was a wistful familiarity.

That was when she realized the Earth really was trembling. Laf and Perry flickered in the air, their edges falling into sharp relief. The lighter Carmilla had brought them clattered to the ground, displaced from within them by the force of the _thing_ that approached.

A comet shone above them in the midday sky, a point of silver darkness.

“Back,” Perry said suddenly, and Carmilla found herself blasted a few meters over, her head cracking painfully against the stone wall surrounding the graveyard. It was too warm to be simple sun-heated, near burning.

A figure rose from the centre of the graveyard, an unmarked plot. Shadows draped her, filmy and opaque.

Carmilla’s vision came back in slowly to find the figure leaning over her, familiar and unknown. “Oh, darling,” Mattie said, her voice rich and ragged. Her eyes were veined with angelic odd silver blood, seeping wider and wider by the second, “She comes from the long deep dark."

 

* * *

 

Introductions were complicated, to say the least of it.

Kirsch and Mel arrived, a few vital minutes behind. Kirsch had read the map wrong. Now they lingered and watched, weapons held with casual grace. Laf edged around the perimeter of their graveyard, the stone walls crackling with energy in their wake. Laura donated the amulet, and Perry set it to swinging over the iron gate. It wouldn’t be enough to stop Inanna, not nearly, but they could try.

Carmilla was all too familiar with the weak, horrible concept of _trying_. It was never enough. When she didn’t succeed, she failed. There was no point in trying to wrap it up in pretty intentions.

But she would try. For Laura, who had taken up residence in front of her almost-grave again, the forget me nots winding up around her ankles like they had missed her.

It had been a long time since Carmilla had gone into something without knowing how it was going to end, one way or another.

_For you_ , Carmilla silently promised Laura, _I’d try anything_.

 

* * *

 

It was an age and a moment later when Inanna arrived.

Carmilla’s talents, whatever they had been, deserted her. Nothing had warned her. No earth had shifted under her feet, no air had crackled, no lightning had struck. Inanna just _appeared_ , like it was nothing. Like she wasn’t notable. Like she had been walking down a road, not strolling into a heavily guarded cemetery, surrounded by Fallen and nephilim and ghosts alike.

Inanna had always been like that. Ignorant of the rules as long as it got her what she wanted. After all, she was never the one that would pay for anything. That was always Carmilla.

It was unfair. Carmilla tried so hard not to think like that because it wouldn’t get her anywhere but — this wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to deal with Inanna anymore. It hurt. Carmilla didn’t want to hurt anymore.

“Darlings,” Inanna said, sweet. Mattie shivered on the ground behind Carmilla, drained and half-mad from her Fall. Kirsch, who had been treating her wounds, shifted in front of her. “And you. The halflings.” The false kindness was dropping from her face. “And _you_. Little angel girl.”

Laura, braver than they were, always, took point. Her arms were crossed tight across her chest. On her, it didn’t look defensive. “Why are you here?”

The smile dropped away entirely. Without it, Inanna’s face looked more mask than human. Carmilla got the impression she was far away, beneath a dead shell. Maybe there was more truth to Mattie’s words than she’d originally though. _The long deep dark_. “An errand.”

Laf choked out a laugh. Only they would at a time like this. “The grocery store is a couple turns back, if you were looking.”

Inanna ignored them completely. Carmilla was grateful for that. “I’m here to finish my business with _her_.” Inanna sneered at Laura, the expression worse than the blankness. “I took your wings to unlock the rest of the Fallen. They’re the key to our earthly horror here. But clearly it wasn’t enough."

Laura faltered. Her arms dropped to her sides, curled in empty fists. Light flickered in her palms, shining dull sparks. “You- you were the one who took my wings?”

_I don’t feel like it’s my fault,_ Laura had said, an aeon and two years ago, old and new and freshly minted. That had been the truth.

They’d talked about Falling, an eternity and a day ago. Painfully, slowly. What it had felt like. Why. Their memories of who they’d been ever and never ago. Carmilla had told tales of why her family had fallen, of Will and Mattie and their places in Inanna’s hierarchy. Of the ones she’d only found once down on Earth, and why she’d had to end them. They were all trapped here. Laura had deserved to know what they’d all made of their cages.

And now, Inanna, the one who had tipped Carmilla over that cliff’s edge, wanted to free her. To free _all_ of them.

“We’re all responsible for our actions, of course, but our intentions play into a Fall as well.” Inanna regarded Laura with disdain at this, like she was a doll, a toy. “That’s why _you_ always seemed to leak energy. I never could fasten you down to this cinder of a planet properly. You were too _good_.” Inanna said it like a curse.

Silence, but for the creak of Mel nocking an arrow in her crossbow. Inanna smiled, like she could see through Carmilla to the raging turmoil within her. “It didn’t work before, but that’s alright. I don’t mind taking a more _personal_ approach.”

Inanna drew a shining golden knife from a sheath on her waist. It made light, not reflected it. “I carved your wings from you, let your blood turn the lock. But it wasn’t enough.” Inanna twirled the knife, taunting. “If I unleash all of you, that should be enough. It’ll be such a delight to inflict you on the world."

_Pompeii_ , Carmilla thought. _The heart of the world bursting to the surface._

“You took-” Laura’s chest heaved. She looked impossibly mortal in that moment, her cheeks flushed red instead of silver. “That’s why it felt like it’s still-“ Laura’s hand went to her chest, directly across her body from where her wing scars gleamed.

Time hung silent. Then Laura stepped towards Inanna, toward the deceptively dainty gold knife in Inanna’s hands.

Carmilla’s immortal heart fell, a pit yawning in her stomach. She didn’t dare move, not with Inanna holding that horrible, beautiful knife. “Laura. What are you doing?

Laura held up a hand, stalling Carmilla in her lunge. “It’s okay.” Her voice was soft and diamond hard, almost… caring? Understanding? “I think I’ve figured it out. My wings are still here. Their power is-“

The knife shone brighter as Laura lit up, their brightness a mirror.

“I spent so much time hating you and being afraid of you that I just couldn’t see it. All your broken hearts. Because of that _one thing_ , they trapped you in a human body like it was chains. And fear and hatred have twisted all of us into something we were never supposed to be.” Laura took a single step more, flowers of all kinds unfurling under her feet. Suns shone in her hands. “Somewhere in all that anger and darkness, you lost all your hope, didn’t you? But maybe it’s not too late to give you back what they took. To set you free.”

Inanna’s face contorted. “Set me-“

Laura blurred forward before anyone could stop her and threw herself on Inanna’s knife. The tip of the blade, gold as a sunrise, glittered on her back, straight through the centre of where her wings had once been. Silver blood soaked through her shirt around the gold, iridescent, oil on water.

“ _No_ ,” Carmilla screamed, voice torn in two, but Inanna was faster than she was. Inanna twisted the knife and Laura-

-dropped.

Laura’s head lolled against the grass, her eyelashes fluttering like she was a half-second from sleep. Instead of forget-me-nots, silver spread from her body, spreading thick and glossy over the graveyard grass. Her lips moved silently, her words lost in the distance between them. Carmilla stumbled forward, ignoring Kirsch’s hands at her arms. She was stronger than he was, especially now, desperate. Carmilla hardly noticed her knees hitting the ground, her hands bracing her upright.

Carmilla could understand why Laura had always put hand to the earth like it was sacrament, now. The grass and dirt beneath her palms felt like the most real thing of this situation — damp, and scratchy, and filled with a kind of ordinary magic.

“Odd, isn’t she,” Inanna said. Carmilla could see her shake Laura’s blood off the tip of her knife in the corner of her eye. “Just a moment now, my glittering girl. Then you’ll understand.” Her tone snapped, and Carmilla jumped. “You used to understand without my _needing_ to explain things so precisely. You let yourself fall in more ways than one.”

Laura’s lips moved again, soundless. Carmilla tried to stem the blood, but as her palms flooded with sticky silver blood, the world seemed to shake.

Too late, magic shimmered. Carmilla felt feather settle around her, familiar and foreign. In the same way she’d been able to feel Falls, she felt… a release. Again, the ground shifted, the hostile chill melting into something insignificant.

Inanna choked. Light sprang from her, the sharp edges of her form fading and redefining. Any other day, Carmilla would have flinched back, but the weight of Laura’s hand half across Carmilla’s knee pinned her to the spot.

“What did you _do_?” Inanna hissed. Her form wobbled, specks of black growing in her. Footsteps thudded behind Carmilla, and she turned just enough to see Mel pitch the amulet at Inanna.

The knife landed in the grass, Laura’s blood still shining across the sharp edge. The amulet clattered on top of it, shiny and harmless. Inanna was gone. She had never been there and always would be, scattered to nothing in the air.

Movement caught Carmilla’s eye. It was Laura. Her hand had moved, twitching across the top of Carmilla’s knee. “It worked? Cool beans.” Laura coughed, winced. Her hand went to her stomach, flooded with her blood. Her mouth turned farther down. “Ow."

Carmilla felt her tears then, cold against her burning face. “How did you know?”

“I just followed my heart.” Laura found Carmilla’s hand, and the touch of her fingers, warm and alive but faltering, had Carmilla’s eyes prickling again. Laura seemed on the verge of tears, too. “I took a chance — that the Fallen were like us. Scared, and afraid, and broken. I gave them back to themselves. Inanna too. Nobody-“ another hacking cough. “Nobody deserves emptiness."

“Without the power, without the-“ Carmilla’s words choked, but she couldn't spare a hand to wipe the tears away. Laura had gone blurry.  “Laura, you’ll fade to nothing.”

“Sorry,” Laura whispered, sweet and sad. Then-

Laura stopped. Moving. Breathing. Speaking. Even the flow of blood under Carmilla’s hands slowed.

“No.” Carmilla couldn’t her words over her heartbeat, thundering in her chest. She could feel her pulse against her fingers, pressed tight against Laura’s motionless chest. “You _didn’t_.”

Carmilla didn’t know who she was speaking to. Her mother. Laura. The world, for allowing Laura to bleed out onto its earth.

Carmilla closed her eyes. It was useless to keep them open, anyway, with so many tears.

Someone settled at her side, their wings brushing against hers. Feathers sparked with static, a feeling forgotten and remembered.

“Power can be shared.” Mattie’s hand was gentle on Carmilla’s shoulder. All those years, and still a sister. “All is not lost, darling.”

Carmilla took a breath, released it. It hurt to breathe. She could remember Laura’s lips pressed to her throat at night, the almost-kiss they’d shared a thousand times over. “You can save her?”

Mattie sighed, her wings moving with her as if they’d never been left behind. “If you’re willing to pay the price.”

Carmilla’s knee shifted with her stifled sob, and Laura’s hand fell to the ground. A forget-me-not peeked from between her fingers, its leaves painted with silver. It was alone. One flower. Not a cluster. Not a patch. It was tiny and delicate. Beautiful.

Carmilla picked it, tucking the stem of the flower into the tight braid at Laura’s temple. “Anything.”

 

* * *

 

“I still think you should have kept the wings.”

Carmilla rolled her eyes, and stole another fry off Laura’s plate. Laura’s eyes narrowed, and slowly, haltingly, the plate slid away from Carmilla as if pulled by a string. She was getting better and better at that, to Carmilla’s great amusement. “Listen, cutie, they look better on you than me.”

Laura scowled. Even now, it seemed like a miracle to behold emotion on her, painted in sweeping strokes. She was so _alive_. “Well, I never got to see you with them! I sacrificed my life to save everyone and when I wake up _you’ve_ sacrificed your immortality and-“

“Half sacrificed,” Carmilla reminded her. She reached across the table to cup Laura’s hand in hers. She could do that now. Carmilla could touch Laura all she liked. And oh, she _liked_. “I’m sure Kirsch wouldn’t appreciate you calling his two hundred years average.”

Laura sighed. “Kirsch is-“

Carmilla squeezed her hand. All this time, and the grounding sensation of it stayed just the same. She liked that kind of constant. “A half angel. Like us.”

“I was going to say ‘a unique individual’, but sure.” Laura kissed the back of Carmilla’s hand, sending a flicker of electricity straight to Carmilla’s heart. Her eyes glittered silver under the flickering fluorescent lights. “Nephilim. Fancy word, isn’t it?”

“Fancy word for a fancy girl,” Carmilla agreed. Then she freed Laura’s hand and used her new position to grab another handful of fries.

“Carm!”

Still laughing, salt on her lips and love in her heart, Carmilla leaned across the table and kissed Laura.

Because sometimes, there really were happily ever afters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the only multi-chapter Carmilla fic I've done. I'm glad I extended it. Thank you so much for everyone whose commented! You made this journey happen. 
> 
> You can find me at writerproblem193.tumblr.com to chat about my writing!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to LMoriarty and onbrokenfeet for being there when I did a livewrite for this! Your comments helped me actually finish this story. 
> 
> You can find me at writerproblem193.tumblr.com
> 
> You're free to translate or podfic this, just tell me so that I can be all excited about it!


End file.
